Brenda Kai the Executive Director of the Electronic Document Scholarship Foundation interviews EDSF student Lara Heinz. She offers her unique point of view as a student, and shares her experience of how all the things she had learned about came together at the OnDemand Expo.

Brenda Kai: Hi, my name is Brenda Kai, I’m the Executive director at EDSF, a scholarship foundation for the industry. And we’re here at the On Demand Show with several of our students this week. And I’d like to introduce Lara Heinz, one of the students that has been at the show this week.

Lara, we’d like for you to tell us just a little bit about yourself.

Lara Heinz: Well, I’m a senior in college, I’ll be graduating in May. I’ll be graduating with a BSA in graphic design and a BS in marketing. I’ve had various internship opportunities and it’s really helped shape what direction I want to go in with my career. Right now I’m looking more towards corporate branding, I have a big interest in social media, and so this conference has been a great way to kind of take what I’m interested in and then see, you know, how to actually implement it in the work place.

Brenda: You’ve had a couple of days to actually walk the floor show and have some conversations with quite a few of the different vendors. What have you seen that’s been interesting and cutting edge and just sort of cool?

Lara: There’s been a lot of, just things, but things that have been way over my heard really. Things I’ve heard about, but actually seeing them implemented and demonstrating them, the printing processes that I’ve seen are just out of this world. You know, from my end as a graphic designer, I usually do everything on the computer and then send it away to get printed and don’t really see that back-end process, so it’s been really interesting to see just how much goes into it and, you know, all the new technology they have to do interesting printing processes.

And then on the software side, all the progress they’re making with cloud computing and, you know, box.net, was one of the, I think one of the conference, but they’re booth was really interesting and what they’re doing was really interesting. So it was good for me to get some, seeing the different companies and what they have to offer, and it was nice being a student going around the floor doing that instead of business.

Brenda: I know you’ve had the opportunity to meet with several of the EDSF board of directors one on one. And I think one of the questions that you asked them were, “What were the challenges facing the industry and how are they looking to overcome some of those challenges?” Can you share those conversations with us?

Lara: Yeah, we went around with a Flip video camera and did some little interviews, so kind of casual, just a little more fun, in a way, to talk to them. I really enjoyed it and hear what they had to say. And it was interesting, some of the challenges that they’ve talked about, were just acquiring new talent and having the talent with a skill set that they’re looking for. And so it was nice to hear companies saying that, because as a graduate, of course, I’m panicking about a job and just like all of my classmates are, and I’m sure everything is, but it’s nice to know that companies are interested in students, they want to see us succeed, they want to take us and mold us and they’re interested to hear our new ideas, so I don’t think—I guess before the conference I was nervous I’d be disadvantaged in this market as a, you know, young—

Brenda: Unemployed.

Lara: Yeah. Young employee, right out of college, but now I’m a little more confident that, you know, I do have new ideas and companies are, innovative companies are willing to hear those and use those.

Brenda: So whe you get back home, or in your case you’re on the bus and you have internet wi-fi again and you start to Twitter, what are you going to Twitter about the show?

Lara: Well, actually I’ve been bummer, the whole conference, I haven’t been getting very good cell phone reception or else I would’ve been tweeting the whole time, just, you know, the interesting things I’ve been seeing out there

But, you know, going back, I want to go back and look at what others, a lot of companies are Tweeting from the show floor, so I’m interested to go back and see what they had, go look at the videos and the articles they posted. You know, I’d follow the feed on Twitter so that I could, you know, go back and look at those. So, I’m going to probably pull that information, stuff that I know people might be interesting in hearing, re-Tweet it so they can really share what I got to experience here, and take it back to them.

Brenda: That’s great. And just in closing, EDSF is accepting scholarship applications right now. The deadline is May 2nd, for anyone that would like to apply, the website address is www.EDSF and the scholarship application is on the home page. And we would encourage you to send in an application. Thank you.

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